by Eshkol Nevo
I would pick up Yermi and Hagai Carmeli from their mortgaged houses and we’d drive to see Ari. We would disconnect him from all the machines, dress him in his old twelfth-grade sweatshirt (because of his illness, he’s lost all the weight he gained since then), and sneak him out of oncology to the pub in Kfar Azar. Maybe it still exists, that pub, with its long wooden tables. We’d drink shandies and munch pretzels from a little glass bowl, in memory of the old days, and talk about everything but the fact that Ari might die. Hagai Carmeli would definitely start crying at some point, he always cried when he drank too much, and Yermi would constantly look at his phone and come on to the waitresses, even though at our age, it’s pathetic.
When the check came, we’d all pay our share and, as usual, realize that we’d paid too little, and everyone would have to add something. Except for Ari, whose share we’d pay.
* * *
My friends never think of me as a writer, and never will. At the most, they think it’s funny that I’ve become a person who gets interviewed.
They saw me copying during the Bible final exam; they saw me come home from basic training in the Armored Corps broken and humiliated; they saw me in love with Tali Leshem for four years, a love that everyone but me was sure would end in tears; they scraped me off the floor after she married someone else; they sat shivah for my grandmother with me and know that I’m still mourning for her; they helped me walk after my slipped disk; they helped me move apartments, even when we’d already reached the age when you hire movers to do the job; they call me at the studio now twice a day to make sure I’m still alive.
They know very well that I don’t have answers for anything. And that if I had the courage, I’d reply to all the questions people ask me in interviews the same way: I don’t know. I have no idea. Ask someone who understands.
* * *
—
After we managed to pay the check, we’d return Ari to the hospital, take off his sweatshirt, dress him in his open-backed gown, cover him with a blanket, and sing him songs from the first Knisiat Hasechel album until he fell asleep.
Yermi would definitely try to flirt with one of the nurses in the department.
And Hagai Carmeli and I would wait patiently until he finished. Like we had so many times in the past.
Then we’d all go out together to the huge parking lot.
On the way, Hagai Carmeli would definitely say: Maybe that was the last supper. He always had the tendency to say things there was no need to say but that sounded nice.
After a long silence that might have embarrassed other people, we would get into the car and I’d drop each of them off at his house and say, Regards to the wife, and then drive to the studio, alone, slower than usual, thinking that if Ari really dies, it’ll be a sign that an era in my life has ended. And a new, totally different era is beginning.
What is your favorite word?
Scandalmonger.
What word do you hate the most?
Terminal.
Such a two-faced word. It can be the place where you begin a journey, filled with the promise of exotic lands and new experiences.
Or it can be the end, the very end. Of everything.
If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?
A deejay. That’s my standard reply. It sounds good and it’s not a complete lie.
But the truth is that if I weren’t a writer who ran workshops and acted as my kids’ chauffeur, I would spend more time and energy looking for Hagai Carmeli. In high school, we were a threesome: Ari, Hagai Carmeli, and me. Ari and I trusted and supported each other totally. Hagai Carmeli, you could only trust him as far as you could throw him. But I’ve never had the kind of soul-searching talks I had with him in his basement with anyone else. Not even later, with the women I loved, did I have conversations like that. We would play chess until midnight to the sounds of Pink Floyd, and then get into our sleeping bags and talk till morning. To the sounds of Pink Floyd. There was an old grandfather clock in the living room that used to chime really loudly on the hour, and that’s how we knew time was passing. At six in the morning, light would come in through the curtainless only window in the basement, and that’s how we knew that the night had ended. When I close my eyes now, I can hear Hagai Carmeli’s voice drifting over to me in the darkness of the basement, always a bit hoarse, the slow lilt of his speech a soft buffer against the very sharp things he sometimes said. “Tell me, man, don’t you feel…a little stupid when we sing ‘Wish You Were Here’? Everyone we know is pretty much here, right? So who’s left to miss?”
An intimate conversation with someone you’re close to is one of the greatest pleasures life has to offer. But for such a conversation to take place, you need a partner who knows how to listen and also how to confess. How to seek the truth without being hurtful. Unpredictable but not threatening. And of course, you need time. So that both sides can dig deep. And you need a place where all that can happen. In short, we’re talking about a miracle that takes place only rarely. And that miracle happened to me with Hagai Carmeli over and over again—before he disappeared.
It’s tempting to blame the army for the way his life got turned around. It adds an ideological layer to the story. And yes, the army really did screw him up. A series of unfortunate incidents possibly caused by his big mouth and his slowness, but also by the stupidity of the system, led to the most intelligent person I know ending up as a base maintenance worker. He transported gravel from one place to another in a wheelbarrow, swept sidewalks with a witch’s broom, and, as he walked the paths of the base, contemplated the unbearable heaviness of being. I used to visit him on the Saturdays he was confined to base for one reason or another, and we would sit in the sentry booth all night—his cocked weapon hanging across his short body, his curly red hair sprouting from under his helmet—and listen to Pink Floyd, cooking up schemes to help him transfer to another platoon, to a job that would truly enable him to contribute. Occasionally, we would go out for a slow walk, a very slow walk, around the booth so he wouldn’t fall asleep, and when he fell asleep anyway, I kept watch so his commander wouldn’t surprise us, ready to elbow him in the ribs to wake him, listening to the random words he muttered in his sleep, “No,” “Normandy,” “Twenty-two,” trying in vain to squeeze some meaning out of them.
He was finally discharged due to psychological problems.
But it wasn’t just the army that unhinged him. There was also that business about his little sister Danya. They were too close, almost joined at the hip. He never said it in so many words, but apparently, when they were teenagers, that closeness spilled over into forbidden territory. Or maybe it was just in his head, maybe he just fantasized a spill over, which in itself was forbidden. I’m not sure. That was the only subject he was silent about in our conversations. But I remember something he once said to me, in the basement (he spoke the kind of language that wasn’t ashamed to be beautiful, which also got him into trouble in the army), “I need to get as far away from her as possible. There are people who simply weren’t meant to live together in the same house.”
In the end, he left the country. Not because of her. And not because of the army. He got involved with the wrong people. After his early discharge, he became obsessed with making as much money as he could. He opened a café and closed it. He imported and exported. He bought and sold. When I asked what, he said, “You’re better off not knowing.”
With me, he only talked about what he would do with the money, a different grandiose plan every time: establish an NGO that would help soldiers in emotional distress, establish a museum of the Hebrew language, buy all the land adjoining Ga’ash Beach so no one could ever build there.
Then one night, when he was twenty-five, he pulled a vanishing act. It seems that he owed a lot of money to a lot of people and loan-shark thugs came by his apartment twice and broke windows.
He didn’t get in touch with me before he disappeare
d. Or after. I thought it was his way of protecting himself and was sure he’d come back. I give him a year, two at most, I told Ari. But three years later, there was still no sign of him on the horizon. And what was more upsetting: There was no sign of life. And even more upsetting: I was the only one who cared.
His father had died in the Yom Kippur War—Hagai was two then—and his mother developed Alzheimer’s at a relatively young age, and when I called her, she didn’t even remember who Hagai was.
So I called Danya. His sister.
A year earlier, by chance, I was sitting in a café where she was waitressing, and now I went back to that café. She was still working there, and she dashed around the tables with amazing speed. So different from the pensive way her brother ambled through life. When I told her I wanted to speak to her, she said, “Not now,” and wrote her number on a piece of paper.
She answered after one ring.
I said: It makes no sense that in the twenty-first century, a person can fade away without leaving a trace. I suggested we raise some money and form a search party. Or that we hire the services of a well-known missing persons site.
You can’t laugh in someone’s face over the phone, but that was my feeling, Danya laughed in my face. A search party? To look for Hagai? First of all, if he doesn’t want to be found, you won’t find him. Believe me. My résumé includes hundreds of hours of playing hide-and-seek with him in the backyard. Besides, exactly who would you ask to contribute? All the people he owes money to? Do you know that your friend went through all the money I saved up in a year of waitressing? He asked me to lend him money right before he disappeared. Said he’d pay back everything in a week. You think you know him? You don’t know a thing about Hagai.
But I miss him, our conversations, finally I have someone to think about when I hear “Wish You Were Here”—I wanted to tell her, but didn’t. Maybe because it suddenly occurred to me that the bitterness in her voice had something to do with what had spilled over between them.
Ari didn’t think it was such a great idea either. You know what I think of Hagai, he said. A brilliant guy, but bottom line, the only thing he cares about is himself. You think he’d organize a search party for you if you disappeared?
And so it happened that the search party formed to find Hagai Carmeli consisted of only one person. Me.
I developed a ritual I follow on every trip I take. Right after checking in at the hotel, I drop my luggage in the room and check the schedule left for me on the desk to make sure there’s no interview planned for the next hour or two. I’m considered a minor, if not unsuccessful, writer in most of the countries I visit, that’s the bitter truth, but it has its advantages—the schedule they leave for me on the desk has enough holes in it to be insulting, so I can leave immediately to wander around the city. Without a map.
Those rambles have two purposes: The obvious one—to get lost. And the hidden one—to find Hagai Carmeli.
* * *
—
Two years ago, in Istanbul, I momentarily thought I’d succeeded.
There are chestnut vendors on the streets.
And one of them—it’s hard to explain.
Something in the way he moved his hands. His protruding elbows.
I moved closer to him.
I listened to him speaking with a customer. The voice—slightly hoarse. The cadence—slow. He could have dyed his red hair black. He could have surgically altered his face. That’s what you do when you want to disappear.
I went over to him and asked for some chestnuts. I tried to catch his eye. But he treated me as if I were just another customer. Picked up a handful of chestnuts with an iron scoop, dropped them in a brown bag, and turned to the next person in line.
I decided to take a chance. I walked about ten meters, leaned on the fence of Gezi Park and shouted: Hagai!
It’s instinctive to respond when your name is called.
I didn’t think he would look at me, but I studied his face for the slightest movement. The smallest twitch.
Nada.
A few birds, frightened by my shout, flew into the park, and the chestnut vendor continued serving his customers.
But the next morning, he wasn’t there. I told the story to my hosts from the publishing company, who explained to me that all of Istanbul knows that chestnut vendors are actually undercover agents for Erdoğan. They have been keeping an eye on the goings-on in Gezi Park since the attempted coup five years ago. That’s why they change their posts so frequently.
That explanation didn’t convince me and I kept searching for him in Istanbul. And, in fact, in every place I’ve been to during the last few years.
When I meet with people, during newspaper interviews, on the subway, in taxis, on the streets—I never stop searching for Hagai Carmeli.
In an act of desperation, I made him a character in one of my books. Under another name, of course. He also disappears in the book, and there are all sorts of rumors about him, but in the end, at the moment of truth, he returns. I’d hoped he would somehow get ahold of the book. I pictured him arriving at a meeting with readers—at first I wouldn’t notice him because he’s short and hidden by the crowd. Only later would his red hair pop up, and at the end of the meeting, he would wait patiently for the last person who approached to ask questions to leave, and only then would he come up to me, my book in his hand, and smile that mini-malistic smile of his at me.
Even in my answers to these questions—which I promised myself would be totally honest and open—I mentioned him as a genuine friend who played an active part in my life and included him in the last supper with Ari (it’s so easy to learn what didn’t happen in a writer’s life from the books he wrote, but most readers still insist on doing the opposite).
I also returned Yermi from the abyss of oblivion to that supper, even though I have no idea what’s happening with him today. In fact, even though I’ve been writing about circles of friends for years and lecture about friendship as a major value of Israeli society—
I’ve had only three good friends.
Only one is left.
And soon, maybe he…
Then what?
Where will I take my secrets? Who will I tell that I haven’t been sleeping at home for two weeks now and that when Dikla and I talk on the phone about which of us will go to the parent-teacher meeting and who will take care of the car insurance, her voice is colder than Jerusalem in winter? Who will I be my real self with? Can a person live without any friends at all?
How do you manage to deal with the loneliness that’s part of writing?
I don’t.
Who is your first reader?
I circle around Dikla on the days she’s reading my manuscript, waiting for her to say something. Waiting for her to fall asleep so I can see how much she’s read. And if she wrote any comments. Bottom line, I can’t do anything without thinking about what she will say.
The most difficult time was during my exile to the studio. She didn’t really send a messenger with divorce papers for me there after I returned from Colombia. She’s not that kind of person. She just asked me not to come home for a few days, or weeks, it was hard for her to know. She needed time to digest it all and decide what she would do. She also asked me not to call. So she wouldn’t have to not answer.
That was a dark time. I could barely move from the yoga mat because of my back pain.
I canceled all my writing workshops. And all my meetings. I didn’t tell anyone, at first. She asked me not to. And I didn’t know what to tell them. The situation was unclear.
The tone of her voice in our last conversation led me to believe that there was a real possibility I might lose her.
* * *
—
On our fifth date, she said that since she read The World According to Garp, she’d been dreaming of marrying a writer. That was the most personal thing
she’d said to me until that moment. Most of the time she was silent, listening, and every now and then, she offered mature, astute opinions on a variety of social issues. It seemed to me that she was hiding a wound under all those adamant opinions. She majored in philosophy and business administration, an unusual combination, and she’d come back from London a few months before we met. She’d gone there on a trip, met a rich twenty-year-old Brit, and moved in with him. A year later, they had a bad breakup. She didn’t want to tell me any more than that. But whenever she mentioned him, there was more anger than hurt in her eyes. Maybe that’s why she’s so cautious with me, I thought, but never dared to ask. She wore tailored clothes. Restrained. Not Israeli. Not student-ish. She was my height without heels, and taller than me with them. It lent her an aristocratic look. Distant. Sufficient unto herself. But the way she moved her hands was remarkably impassioned and sensual. She had long, thin arms, and her hands opened so slowly that they seemed to be caressing, inviting.
It was like that for almost a month. Her body said, Don’t you dare come close to me, but her hands said, Come here now. I didn’t know what to do with that double message, and more than anything, I didn’t want to make a mistake, because from the first moment Ari and Meital introduced us at that club in Kibbutz Cabri, I’d had a sense of destiny. As if something very important was about to be decided. Or, in fact, had already been decided.
We went out four times, and at the end of each date, I didn’t know if there would be another one.
That’s how bad I was at reading her.